Job Offer: Two Positions as Research Associate for Digitizing Buddhist Artefacts
The Center for Religious Studies (CERES) is a Central Research Unit of the Ruhr-Universität. It currently brings together six professors and over 30 researchers, which makes it one of the largest centers for the comparative study of religion in Europe. The center hosts a double degree BA program as well as single and a double degree MA-program for Religious Studies. The programs combine a focus on the material history of religions with theoretical and methodological approaches in the study of religions. They are in constant dialogue with our research projects.
The DiGA project will digitize (2D and 3D) and catalogue a corpus of 1,791 Buddhist sculptures from Gandhara currently kept in the Dir Museum in Chakdara and in the Mission House of the Missione Archeologica Italiana in Saidu Sharif (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan). Being composed of objects for which the archaeological provenance is documented, the collections constitute a solid corpus for the reassessment of relevant research questions in the field of Gandhāran art and Buddhism. The resulting database will be hosted on heidICON, the image and multimedia database of Heidelberg University Library, and made available on OpenAccess. The digitization of the artefacts as well as the documentation of their related meta-data will follow current standards in the field of cultural heritage. This includes a basic cataloguing (i.e. the creation of the object records in heidICON) as well as an extended cataloguing (i.e. art-historical description of the objects in terms of content using controlled vocabularies and the annotation of the visual elements on the digitised material). Altogether, the DiGA project aims at filling a gap for research in the participating disciplines as well as providing a good practice reference for future digitization projects of Buddhist art in particular and South Asian art in general. The project relies on a strong collaborative network between CERES, The Directorate of Archaeology and Museums of the Province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan (IAMP) and Heidelberg University Library.
The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (funding line eHeritage) for a period of three years: 01 February 2021 until 31 January 2024. At CERES, two positions of research associate (TV-L E 13 / 50% which is 29,87 weekly working hours) are to be filled at the earliest possible date following the official start of the project and until 31 January 2024, subject to the allocation of funds.
Tasks of the Future Research Associates:
- Preparation and coordination of the photographic campaigns (conducted by contracted professional photographers) with local partners (DOAM and IAMP)
- Development of thesauri for the description of objects and their metadata
- Art historical indexing of the digitised objects and their in-depth description and annotation
- Coordination with Heidelberg University Library regarding the implementation of the database, its long-term accessibility and interoperability.
Requirements:
- MA in South Asian art history or related fields (a focus on Buddhist art is preferable)
- Excellent command of English (writing and speaking)
- Experience in the field of digital processing of historical sources
- Willingness to travel
Since the position is funded by third-party funds the employee has no teaching obligation.
Travel expenses for interviews cannot be refunded.
At Ruhr-Universität Bochum, we wish to promote careers of women in areas in which they are underrepresented, and we would therefore like to encourage female candidates to send us their applications. Applications by suitable candidates with severe disabilities and other applicants with equal legal status are likewise most welcome.
We look forward to receiving your detailed application, which you should send by e-mail (as a single PDF file) to Junior Prof. Dr. Jessie Pons by 31 January 2021. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Junior Prof. Dr. Jessie Pons.
Announcement of the official job offer by the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.